The gear ratios provided are regularly to be seventy-four and fifty-three. It will perhaps be fair, having described the working of this device, to allow the makers to state their own general description and their claims for it:
DRIVING GEAR OF
DAYTON CHAINLESS.
“The whole machine in general construction—frame, front forks, handlebars, wheel, front hub, cranks and pedals—is our own regular highest grade work, as used on the Road King. The rear hub is so constructed that the wheel can be removed or returned to frame for repairing tire without disturbing the adjustment of the bearings. The front wheel is removable, same as in other bicycles. All bearings, including connections on side rods, are ball bearings.
“As the power is applied evenly from both sides, and the gears used for driving are at centre of crank-hanger box in frame, the centre of gravity is forward of the rider, where it should be, same as in regular chain wheels. This is a very important feature, and insures for this system a very material point of superiority over other chainless bicycles—that of lightness, perfection of balance and great strength. Another very important feature is the durability and lack of attention required. The chain on chain wheels requires a great deal of attention, while the driving mechanism of this wheel requires only proper adjustment at first, and then very limited attention at long intervals.
“The driving rods in connection with the divided crank axle being easily and entirely detachable from either side, in case of accident, should one pedal, crank or driving rod on same side be broken, the broken parts can be immediately detached and the rider can continue his journey without trouble or delay, using the remaining drives on opposite side. The machine is a marvel of fine mechanical skill, carried to a point described best by the word ‘frictionless.’”
SOME DEDUCTIONS.
Whatever peculiarities are involved in driving a bicycle by this method will be shared equally by the [Dayton] and the [Featherstone], the change gear of the latter, of course, excepted; and what inconvenience may be found from lack of a step will pertain to both. The statement in the Featherstone catalogue, above quoted, that in case of breakage of the driving gear on one side the rider can continue his journey without trouble or delay by using the drivers on the remaining side was evidently made without having tried the experiment or having talked with a locomotive engineer about it. In any change of gear which shifts a pinion into or out of engagement with another, there is always liability to a shock or jar as the teeth of one slip into the spaces in the other, and this will occur whether the engaging pinion is moved directly forward in the same plane with the other or from one side. The shifting clutch on the Featherstone chainless probably resembles a pinion with only a single tooth, which tooth is to enter and catch in a single space. How far this clutch will be able to avoid the usual drawbacks of shifts in practice time must determine; we cannot speak from observation, for no specimen of the bicycle has come eastward as yet.
As illustrating the somewhat uncertain operation of change gears, an incident which occurred to a certain rider comes to mind. Some years ago he was convoying a small party over a country road, being himself mounted on a bicycle fitted with a “Hy-Lo” gear which he was testing. While climbing a hill and nearly at its top, the jolt by unexpectedly striking a brick caused his knee to hit the tripping device which governed the shift, and this moved the gear into midway position; the pedals then “became footrests,” and the bicycle began to back with its rider down the hill, pawing the air ineffectually with his feet, until he was landed in a blackberry bush at the bottom, greatly to the amusement of his companions and to his own discomfiture, as he had just been kindly “coaching” one of them as to the best way to overcome a grade. There may be some question, in general, as to whether changing gear at will might not, in practice, prove less desirable than we are all disposed to imagine, and for this reason: the learner finds the bicycle very fatiguing, partly from the nervous strain and partly because the muscles are put to a strange service; they become wonted to that service in time and cease to trouble, but if the gear ratio could be readily changed while riding (as theoretically seems desirable) the rhythm of pedalling might be so disturbed as to measurably bring back the original fatigue.